Renault F1 Testing Upgraded Suspension To Improve Chassis Performance

While their engine has made massive leaps compared to last year, the Renault works Formula 1 team is far from achieving the same type of chassis performance as their successful customer team, Red Bull.

Since the chassis of the R16 has turned out to be a bit of a disappointment, upgrading the suspension seems to be a pretty good idea as the car has proven to be very difficult to handle on bumpy circuits.

“We’ve some big suspension updates we’re trying, and a few aero bits,” said Jolyon Palmer during the team’s final day of in-season testing at Silverstone. “All the time we’ve got some new bits going on, but the suspension is a big focus for us at the moment.”

The British driver goes on to say that his team did a back-to-back comparison (new vs. old suspension) over the course of the day and that hopefully team engineers will be able to figure out the best setup for moving forward.

“In the morning we ran something different to the race weekend, and then we reverted back, so we’ll see what happens.”

As Autosport points out, Palmer hasn’t found much success himself behind the wheel of a Formula 1 car. His best performance was during the opening race in Australia (P11), followed by three retirements in the last five races.

Despite his retirement during his home Grand Prix on Sunday, Palmer insists that there were “quite a lot of positives” to be drawn from his performance.

“In the wet I was feeling good, ahead of Kev [Magnussen] and catching [Romain] Grosjean, so things we’re looking quite good,” said the Brit.

As of right now, Renault is currently the third-worst team in Formula 1 in terms of points.